I acquiesced in all these arrangements, but I was feeling decidedly blue when I started back to the office.  Vantine’s collection had always seemed to me somehow a part of himself; more especially a part of the house in which it had been assembled.  It would lose much of its beauty and significance ticketed and arranged stiffly along the walls of the museum, and the thought came to me that it would be a splendid thing for New York if this old house and its contents could be kept intact as an object lesson to the nervous and hurrying younger generation of the easier and more finished manner of life of the older one; something after the fashion that the beautiful old Plantin-Moretus mansion at Antwerp is a rebuke to those present-day publishers who reckon literature a commodity, along with soap and cheese.

That, of course, it would be impossible to do; the last barrier to the commercial invasion of the Avenue would be removed; that heroic rear-guard of the old order of things would be destroyed; in a year or two, a monster of steel and stone would rise on the spot where three generations of Vantines had lived their lives; and the collection, so unified and coherent, to which the last Vantine had devoted his life, would be merged and lost in the vast collections of the museum.  It was a sad ending.

“Gentleman to see you, sir,” said the office-boy, as I sat down at my desk, and a moment later, M. Felix Armand was shown in to me.

I have only to close my eyes to call again before me that striking personality, for Felix Armand was one of the most extraordinary men I ever had the pleasure of meeting.  Ruddy-faced, bright-eyed, with dark full beard and waving hair almost jet black—­hair that crinkled about his ears in a way that I can describe by no other word than fascinating—­he gave the impression of tremendous strength and virility.  There was about him, too, an air of culture not to be mistaken; the air of a man who had travelled much, seen much, and mixed with many people, high and low; the air of a man at home anywhere, in any society.  It is impossible for me, by mere words, to convey any adequate idea of his vivid personality; but I confess that, from the first moment, I was both impressed and charmed by him.  And I am still impressed; more, perhaps, than at first, now that I know the whole story—­but you shall hear.

“I speak English very badly, sir,” he said, as he sat down.  “If you speak French....”

“Not half so well as you speak English,” I laughed.  “I can tell that from your first sentence.”

“In that event, I will do the best that I can,” he said, smiling, “and you must pardon my blunders.  First, Mr. Lester, on behalf of Armand et Fils, I must ask your pardon for this mistake, so inexcusable.”

“It was a mistake, then?” I asked.

“One most embarrassing to us.  We can not find for it an explanation.  Believe me, Mr. Lester, it is not our habit to make mistakes; we have a reputation of which we are very proud; but the cabinet which was purchased by Mr. Vantine remained in our warehouse, and this other one was boxed and shipped to him.  We are investigating most rigidly.”